2007.02.15

Why Not Sinigang?

A short quiz. Which Asian countries do these dishes and ingredients bring to mind?

1) Raw fish.

2) Cheese.

3) Barbequed/roasted pork.

4) Sour (and sometimes spicy) soup.

I'm betting that, unless you're Filipino or have spent a lot of time in the Philippines, the island nation didn't cross your mind.

Raw fish - Japan, right? Tahiti, if you want to venture into the South Pacific. But why not the Philippines? Filipinos have been eating kinilaw, a ceviche-like dish of raw fish or meat, 'cooked' in a souring agent such as vinegar or kalamansi juice,for eons. Kinilaw has as many variations as there are Philippine regions and provinces and, probably, cooks. The few we sampled were, in a word, sublime.

Now, cheese. China/Tibet, perhaps, or Bhutan (yak cheese). Or maybe fermented tofu (aka 'Chinese cheese') came to mind. But what about what must be the tastiest Asian cheese of all: Philippine kesong putih(from 'queso', the Spanish word for cheese; 'putih' means 'white' in both Tagalog and Malaysian), made from fresh carabao milk. We encountered this delicacy in almost every market we visited. It can be crumbly or smooth as satin, sharply salty or mild, milky, and mozzarella-like, or tangy in a telemne sort of way. It's often sold in small flattish slabs, wrapped in banana leaf. And speaking from experience, it's equally fine baked into a bibingka (a sort of rice flour pancake) or drizzled with olive oil.

Moving along ... bbq'd or roasted pig. Malaysian readers will instantly think of home; others might think Guangzhou, Thailand (Trang, especially), Singapore. Yet I'm not sure we've ever, in all our Asian travels, encountered as fervent a love for all things porcine as we did in Manila, where lechon (whole, spit-roasted pig) has a firm grip on seemingly every local's heart. In some regions of the Philippines pig is roasted plain, while in others its body cavity is stuffed with lemongrass and herbs before it takes a turn over the fire. If you're market-hopping in Manila count on coming face to face with one, two, or more glistening, golden carcasses on any given day.

Finally, sour (and maybe spicy) soup. This is an easy one. Look north, to China's Sichuan province, home of suan la tang (hot and sour soup). Then south, to Thailand, for tom yam gong - hot and sour shrimp soup (not to mention tom kha muu, sour pork leg soup). Cambodia and Lao boast samlor, and Vietnam's chua, though sweet, is sometimes tinged with tang. Here in Malaysia we pucker up to laksa assam ('assam' means 'sour'), and in just about any Indonesian town you can find someone to serve you sayur asam, a soup-like dish of mixed vegetables soured with tamarind.

But why not sinigang?

Sinigang: the Philippine sour soup, described by the late, great Filipino academic and food writer Doreen Fernandez as 'the most representative of Filipino taste.' Sour, a basic element of the Filipino palate, is perfectly expressed in this dish of meat or chicken or seafood combined with any of a mindboggling variety of vegetables (leaves especially) in a broth tangy from one or a number of ingredients like: sampalok (tamarind), kalamansi lime juice, kamias (belimbi), tomato, guava, vinegar (palm or coconut or cane), the leaves of the alibangbang tree, .... the list goes on. Fresh green chilies, chopped or left whole, often find their way into the pot too.

Sinigang is easy to love. It hits the gullet head-on, satisfying with the flavor of its main protein ingredient and titillating with its piquancy. With each spoonful of sinigang the appetite is at once sated and stoked. Eaten with rice, sinigang is a meal in itself. We found it everywhere, from market eateries to streetside shops offering home cooking at rockbottom prices to proper restaurants with aircon and cloth napkins on the tables.

So - why is this dish, with a flavor profile easily as accessible to the Western palate as tom yum gong and Chinese hot and sour soup, so little known outside the Philippines? And why, for that matter, is the Philippines, a nation with a cuisine as rich and complex and regionally varied as any in Asia, so off the map of traveling food lovers?

Google sinigang and a gzillion recipes will pop up. This one is adapted, with what I happened to have on hand, from Memories of the Philippine Kitchen (substitute meat for the fish, or use fillets and ready-made fish stock). I made it Monday, less than 24 hours after returning from Manila, when I suddenly found myself pining for a taste of the Philippines. The cuisine gets under your skin that way. I make no claim to authenticity , but it satisfied the urge. For now.

1. Combine fish bones and head/tail, leek greens, tamarind+water, and chopped tomatoes etc. with 9 cups water in a large pot. Bring to a boil and cook, uncovered, for 20-30 minutes. Skim the foam occasionally. The goal here is a relatively clear stock. Strain and return the broth to the pot.

2. Add daikon, leeks, chilies, and tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the fillets and water spinach and simmer another couple minutes. Add the fish sauce, starting with one HALF of the 1/4 cup, and taste for salt. Add more fish sauce if desired. Taste and add additional souring agent, if necessary, before serving with rice and, if you like, other dishes.

Comments

Hey Robyn,

Glad to see you started writing about your Philippine trip. Mom and Dad absolutely adored you and Dave. Why no fish meat in your sinigang? Fish sinigang is best with grouper or milkfish (bangus). I just cooked Pork sinigang for my sinigang-monster (youngest son Billy). He can eat a bowlful of sinigang and then ask for another bowl after he is done.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing more pics and stories about my country. Oh will you be blogging on this in eGullet too?

Hi, Robyn. Have been lurking for a while, greatly enjoying your posts. I am Filipino and sinigang is my hands-down favorite dish -- the best part is that it's easy to make outside the Phils, key ingredients are simple and easy to find.

Could you please tell me where you found the Doreen Fernandez essay on sinigang? Thanks!

The book that essay came from has been out of print for years. Someone seriously needs to put out new editions of her books. In fact, one could imagine a compilation of her most important, most seminal essays from a US press. These would include the visionary last essay in Tikim, which was first given as a paper at UCBerkeley, as well as her pioneering work (done in collaboration with Dr. Ed Alegre) on kinilaw.

Here's the piece on Doreen published years ago in the journal Gastronomica:

Hi Robyn, we Malay have this dish called Singgang. My grandma/mum used to cook for us. Yummy went eaten with a plate of hot rice fresh from the pot! It's a simple dish where you just boil any kind of seafood (normally fish) together with sliced shallots/onions, garlic and ginger. Finally ,add tamarind juice.

Speaking about Doreen Fernandez interview in Gastronomica, if anyone is interested, there is a bookstore in Manila that is selling copies of that particular issue. Go to powerbooks at Greenbelt. I think it cost around P 500.

Have been enjoying your posts for a few months now :) I am so glad you enjoyed Philippine food. Your kinilaw photo is droolworthy and brought happy memories of many summers spent at my grandparents' beachfront house, where my grandma would just hail the fishermen coming in with their catch! I have been in the US for years and have made adaptations of sinigang using whatever is available. My kids love it, and particularly like mashing the daikon into their steamed rice!

it's kesong puti, not putih. and also, the sinigang would really be authentic and way yummier if it had the fish head in it. some pinoys are partial to fish eyes, and sucking out the gelatinous meat from the fish cheeks

Yay for this post and the championing of Filipino food! I'm glad you discovered and enjoyed these delightful native dishes. I'm a huge kinilaw monster, and have even learned to make it the Visayan way (I'm assuming it's the visayan way because a visayan taught me hehe).

I was pleasantly surprised and so proud when the sinigang na hipon (sour shrimp soup) was featured in the December 2006 issue of Saveur under a feature about the tamarind. It's about time. :)

Hi Robyn, so happy to see your beautiful pictures and stories about your Philippine trip. Been waiting forever for a serious food writer to take notice of our wonderful and varied cuisine. Count me one very grateful Filipino. Thank you for giving our people and our food the respectful and insightful reporting they deserve.

Hello Robyn
Good topic on sour soup I'm from Iligan City, Mindanao Island of P.I. My mom is from Manila and she brought the sinigang to our kitchen in Iligan. But the southern islanders also have their own version of sour soup. Which is called Inoonunan a mixture of ginger, garlic, vinegar & salt. It's only good on fish, it's cooked until it's almost dried out. It's best done in banana leaves, smells really good.